


5 Times Noct Casually Killed Ardyn Out of Irritation

by nickofhearts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickofhearts/pseuds/nickofhearts
Summary: + 1 Time It Wasn't So Casualaka5 + 1 Times People Were Fucking Traumatized by NoctThis is ostensibly part ofThe Adventures of Prince Noctis and Funny Hat Manin that it takes place after those three fics, butit's not what happens in the Hat Man AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamingcicadas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingcicadas/gifts).



> I just want to preface this with the fact that _this never happens_. This is a horrible thing [dreamingcicadas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingcicadas) made me write that, like Ardyn's Accursed soul, has no redeeming value. Ardyn and Noct live grumpily ever after frustrating each other until the end of time in actual Hat Man verse, _I refuse any other reality_.

**1.**

Noct was _seething._

That Ardyn had been in the city for the first time since he'd left Noct bleeding on the ground was one thing, but that he had gone to Noct's father and made his betrothal to Princess Lunafreya of Tenebrae one of the conditions of a peace treaty with Niflheim _and not even come to see Noct_ was completely another.

Noct sat sulking in the back seat of the Regalia, refusing to speak or do anything that didn't involve angry stabbing or blasting daemons to pieces with his magic.

The next time he saw Ardyn, there was going to be _hell_ to pay.

-

It was serendipitous then, that they ran almost straight into him as soon as they reached Galdin Quay.

The moment Ardyn turned and spread his hands out like he was going to start in on one of his grandiloquent speeches, Noct saw red. He was so overcome with blinding anger that he couldn't even think, just warping straight in and stabbing Ardyn in the gut with a sword.

 _"How dare you!"_ Noct shouted, as everyone in the restaurant screamed and ran for cover.

Ardyn just sighed, that familiar look on his face like Noct continued to exceed all expectations to disappoint him. "Noct, _please."_

Noct was still breathing hard, sword at the ready to stab Ardyn again if he tried to warp away, and okay, he was a little turned on, but he'd moved past the age when that would rob him of all rational thought, so it was fine.

 _Why did you leave,_ Noct had wanted to ask for so long, hand in hand with, _why not you,_ but now that he was here, he didn't want to say either of those things to Ardyn.

"I'm not marrying the fucking Princess of Tenebrae," Noct said instead. "So fuck your fucking peace treaty."

He got up, putting the sword away, and looked off to the side, because if he looked at Ardyn, he was probably going to do something regrettable again.

"There are larger things in play here than you or I," Ardyn said, reaching out to tip Noct's chin up, though Noct still refused to look.

His breath hitched in his throat as Ardyn pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, like Ardyn thought he could _bribe_ Noct into doing what he wanted, giving him something that he'd yearned for all these years as the price for Noct's compliance.

"I won't do it," Noct mumbled, throwing his arms around Ardyn's shoulders and clinging to him.

Ardyn just sighed again, patting Noct awkwardly on the back, and it was so familiar that he felt all of five years old again, falling out of the window and right into Ardyn's arms.

 

**2.**

Noct didn't believe it. Ardyn couldn't have had anything to do with his father's death and what had happened in the capital while Noct had been on his way to meet with the Princess. _It couldn't be true._

But the things that everyone was saying about Ardyn, about the _Imperial Chancellor,_ didn't match up with the person that Noct knew.

Ardyn wasn't very _nice,_ sure, but that didn't mean he didn't care. He'd always been there for Noct, even when he'd been so annoyed with Noct that he'd looked like _he_ wanted to be the one to throw Noct straight back out of a window again. That couldn't be the same person that would orchestrate a whole mad plot that had almost completely destroyed an entire city.

Noct refused to believe it.

-

Still, when Ardyn met them again in Lestallum, all smiles, looking like he couldn't be fonder of Noct if he tried, Noct had to know.

"Tell me it isn't true," Noct said, clenching his hand tight around an elemancy sphere.

Ardyn didn't say anything, for once not having the longest of long speeches planned out, and that was worse than if he'd given the most bullshit answer in all existence.

Noct screamed, flinging the Firaga at him, and Ardyn didn't move out of the way.

There were people fleeing the scene again, panicked yells and stampeding crowds, and Noct was probably going to get another hour-long lecture from Ignis on responsibility, princely duty, and how not to act in public, but all Noct could focus on was Ardyn—Ardyn who had spent more time with him than his father, his friends, any one person in the whole _world,_ had kept Noct company when he'd felt the most alone, growing up in the palace surrounded by people who only saw him for what he represented.

"Noct," Ardyn said, but Noct just couldn't.

He stormed off towards where they'd parked the Regalia, throat aching from all the tears he wasn't supposed to shed.

 

**2.5**

Noct followed sullenly behind Ardyn's car, ignoring the looks he was getting from everyone, just concentrating on not driving through a rail or off a steep cliff. It would serve Ardyn right if Noct crashed the car and burned to death in a fiery inferno, he thought viciously, but even now, it was hard to be so fatalistic when Ardyn had spent Noct's entire childhood instilling in him the sense of self-preservation it seemed that Noct had been born lacking.

 _"Don't—_ just dont," Noct had said as soon as he'd gotten behind the wheel, and everyone was keeping their peace for now.

He didn't want to hear it, he didn't want to think, he didn't want _anything_ but to go back ten years to when everything had been so much simpler, and Ardyn had just been the guy in the funny hat that had always been around to save Noct's life.

-

He knew it was a dream because Ardyn actually _wanted_ him, pulling Noct closer to kiss him, tangling his fingers in Noct's hair and curling a hand around his waist. Noct had always felt so safe with Ardyn, that nothing else could touch him as long as Ardyn was there to protect him.

"I wish," Noct murmured quietly, soft so no one else could hear. "I wish I never had to wake up."

 

**3.**

Noct didn't know what was being said because all he could see was how close Ardyn was standing to the dick that wasn't letting them have the Regalia, the familiar way in which they interacted, as if they'd known each other a long time. Ardyn even put a hand on his shoulder, and Noct just exploded.

 _"Are you fucking him???"_ he screamed, which was not what he'd meant to come out of his mouth, but it was too late to take it back now.

Ardyn gave him a look that was halfway between pained and exasperated, like he was wondering how Noct managed to come up with new and entirely different ways of frustrating him on a _daily_ basis, while everyone else was staring at Noct like he'd suddenly turned into a three-headed daemon that breathed fire.

Noct took a deep calming breath, then another, then, "fuck it," he muttered, and threw a Thundaga at Ardyn's _face._

 

**4.**

It wasn't that Noct didn't feel bad about the Princess, or about Ignis' injury, but he needed to see Ardyn again, to ask him _why everything._ Ardyn had always said that he'd be the one to kill Noct, but he'd never mentioned all the collatoral damage involved, or that it was going to be the slowest tease of a murder ever, since Noct was still fucking alive.

He ran through the train chasing after shadows, passing all the people that weren't Ardyn, that might as well have been smoke instead.

It wasn't until he got to the last compartment that Ardyn finally turned, smiling at Noct as if he'd been waiting for him the entire time.

"Come to Gralea, Noct," he said, tipping his hat as a prelude to vanishing into thin air.

"Don't— _leave me,"_ Noct couldn't make himself say, though it was all he'd _wanted_ to say to Ardyn since he'd shown back up again. Noct wasn't a child anymore, and he knew that people did things for terrible reasons, that whatever Ardyn's reasons for everything that had happened since the treaty signing couldn't possibly redeem him.

But just for a few moments longer, Noct thought.

He cast a Blizzaga that froze everything in the compartment under a shining sheen of ice, a moment perfectly captured for the amount of time it would take the ice to melt.

Noct caught at the lapels of Ardyn's coat, leaning up to kiss him this once where Ardyn couldn't duck away or sigh with insufferable weariness at Noct's antics, like _Noct_ was the unreasonable one in every instance. Noct couldn't make Ardyn stay, but he couldn't let him go either.

"You could have just asked," Noct told him, laying his head on Ardyn's shoulder like so many times before. "I would have done _anything."_

He called out a sword, shattering Ardyn to pieces.

 

**5.**

Noct didn't understand what the point of Zegnautus Keep was unless the whole thing was just Ardyn demonstrating to Noct how he'd felt all those long years waiting for Noct to grow up.

Clearly, Noct's patience was lacking the refinement that came with the endless centuries of waiting that Ardyn had had to endure, though there were times during Noct's childhood when he'd very sincerely thought Ardyn had been about to end it all right there and strangle Noct with his bare hands instead of saving him for whatever grand plan he'd had for Noct's _eventual_ murder that made him guard Noct's life with such fervor from the innumerable mishaps and calamities that had tried to claim it on a near daily basis.

Noct owed him so much, but Ardyn had never asked for anything in return, even now, like asking would make it too _easy_.

"I _get_ it," Noct yelled, kicking another imp in the face and following it up with a blast of magic from the ring.

Noct was tired, grumpy, and fucking horny from listening to Ardyn's voice being broadcast over the PA system while playing the longest game of keepaway _ever_ , so it was only fair that when Ardyn finally did show up that Noct hit him right in the face with a fucking Death spell.

-

While he was getting sucked into the Crystal was maybe not the _most_ opportune time for a jerk off session, but Noct was going to take what he could get, and what he could get right now was his hand down his pants while Ardyn picked himself back up and looked so completely torn between giving Noct a more than helpful shove straight into the Crystal and wanting to make whatever point he'd been about to make before Noct had derailed him.

"I'll be waiting," Ardyn finally said, with the kind of expression that Noct was intimately familiar with, though not on Ardyn's face, like something you'd wanted for so long was just out of your reach.

"I know," Noct didn't say, biting his lip until it bled.

He watched Ardyn until light filled his vision completely, Noct's low gasp of pleasure as he came a quiet echo in an empty space. Noct understood now that Ardyn had _always_ been waiting for him.

 

**+1**

Even after everything, Noct wanted _so much_ to just have Ardyn hold him and tell him it was all lie. It might have been selfish, but he wanted Ardyn more than he wanted his father alive, more than he cared about Princess Lunafreya, more than all the fucking gods and their endless games with human souls.

It wasn't _fair,_ and now Noct was going to have kill Ardyn one last time.

"Was any of it real," Noct asked him when Ardyn greeted them in the throne room, holding back tears.

"Oh _Noct,"_ Ardyn said, the way he always did, and anyone who didn't know him like Noct did might have read something else into the flippancy with which the sentiment was delivered, but Noct knew better.

Ardyn did care, but he wanted his final peace with the same fierce determination that Noct wanted _him,_ and there was no way for both of them to get what they wanted.

"I'm sorry," Noct says at the end, instead of, "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK IT I'M WRITING THIS. _JUDGE ME ALL YOU WANT_.
> 
> -
> 
> Noct debated for a possibly shorter amount of time than might be strictly owed to such a grave moment, but he deserved _something_ out of all this that was more than pain and suffering. 
> 
> He'd never wanted anyone else the same way he'd wanted Ardyn, had never even imagined it possible.
> 
> Noct carefully unraveled the scarf from around Ardyn's neck, looping it around his ungloved wrist. He'd always wondered exactly how many layers there were under the heavy overcoat that seemed so impractical for Lucian weather, and he took his time finding out now. 
> 
> He breathed a deep sigh before undoing the last layer, the fading warmth of Ardyn's bare skin something that had seemed untouchable for so long.
> 
> Ardyn's chest was marked by cruel scars, and Noct hoped uncharitably that anyone who'd laid a hand on him had been met with a vicious end, worse even than the crime committed. Noct might not have understood all the stories Ardyn had told him as a child, but he _had_ been listening, and pieces that hadn't made sense to him then were becoming more than clear now.
> 
> He wished, more than anything, that he could go back through time and change things, so Ardyn wouldn't have had to wait so long to be so disappointed by Noct on an everyday basis.
> 
> But, Noct was also self-aware enough by now to know he wouldn't trade anything in the world for all the years he'd had Ardyn at his side.
> 
> -
> 
> It wasn't as good as it could have been if Ardyn had only deigned to give him this even just once, but it was better than the wisps of dreams and imaginings that Noct had held onto through all the years that Ardyn had left him behind to orchestrate this grand masterpiece of his own demise.
> 
> Noct sank himself down on Ardyn's somehow hard cock, not entirely sure about the workings of recently deceased bodies, but not too concerned with the specifics at the moment.
> 
> He braced his hands against Ardyn's chest as he let it fill him up, moaning low in his throat at the feel of it stretching him open. Noct didn't waste time letting himself adjust, he _wanted_ it to hurt, wanted it to be the last thing he felt before he went to meet Ardyn in the beyond. He rocked up on his knees and down again, setting himself a punishing pace that made his muscles ache in protest. 
> 
> When he came, it was to the thought that finally _finally_ , he'd gotten a piece of Ardyn for himself.


End file.
